


ilm

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: OTP: I am doing this for myself (Mehrunissa / Padmavati fics, Padmaavat) [3]
Category: Padmaavat (2018)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/F, F/M, M/M, Oneshot, Period-Typical Homophobia, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-04 22:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16798537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Mehrunissa knows, has always known. It is all she has at the beginning, and all she has at the end. Oneshot, character study.Title means “knowledge” in Arabic.





	ilm

Mehrunissa Khilji knows she will marry Alauddin someday, long before he brings the ostrich back. It is not such a bad prospect: her cousin is laughing, irreverent, daring. True, he is always hankering after the newest precious thing he sees, convinced he deserves to own it, but Mehru dreams of being his pillar, the brightest star in his firmament, the one he always returns to. The way she remembers her mother being so for her father, in her vaguest memories.

She does not expect to be his one and only, but she knows she will be his first, and his favorite.

* * *

Like a pond shattered by a thrown rock, all her dreams disintegrate on her wedding day.

Marriage confirms for her what she always suspected: nothing ever satisfies Alauddin’s appetites: the crown, her father’s head, her brother’s life, the riches of India.

_Not even me._

Yet she fancies that she still remains first in his heart. She knew him, when he was nothing more than a flailing stripling being cuffed across the head for disobedience, and he knew her, when she was nothing more than her pampered father’s daughter always tripping over her own skirts. She learns to turn her mind away from whatever newest object has caught his fancy, but even she has to roll her eyes when she learns of the woman for whom Alauddin is willing to stake everything.

It is not jealousy, truly, that irks her; Mehru knows by now that even if he grasps the Queen of Chittor, he will in time tire of her and cast her aside like a broken doll.

But how much will he burn in the process to have her?

* * *

She hates how much of a mirror Malik Kafur is.

Malik becomes a mirror for the Sultan, showing him exactly what he wishes to see. He strives to do so, knowing that it is the only way he can survive. But for the Sultana, he is a mirror without even trying.

 _We both love him, despite him, despite ourselves_ . _Even as we know we can never truly have him._

 _Can anyone ever truly hold the Sultan’s heart?_ She wonders, and she is tired.

She imagines suddenly, grotesquely, all the three of them -- Empress Mehrunissa, Queen Padmavati, and General Malik Kafur -- in Delhi, a triumvirate controlling -- or being controlled by? -- the Sultan. Would they all serve a different need for him? Would it finally satisfy him?

She shudders.

* * *

The Sultan comes back from the six-month siege with a crippled army, a smoky, mirrored glimpse of Padmavati’s face, and her husband as prisoner and bait.

He eagerly recites to Mehru everything he has sacrificed in order to draw Padmavati to Delhi. It’s as though despite everything, he craves her approval, yearns to know she still looks upon him with favor. Does she still mean something to him, then, that he wishes not to hurt her?

Or is she simply one more person to gloat to, one more barrier’s resistance to crush?

Mehru is quiet, lips pressed into a thin white line. She hears of the men killed, women widowed, children orphaned during this ridiculous siege, and she weeps to think what has become of the Sultanate her father so cherished and cultivated.

She is Empress -- of India, if not of Alauddin’s heart -- and she must do something to staunch this madness.

“Curious to know who has enchanted your husband so?” Hajuriya insinuates, as they approach to the front pavillion to greet Queen Padmavati and her 800 maids.

Mehrunissa says nothing. If she is honest with herself, jealousy did play a role in her insisting to be the one to welcome the Queen. As the Sultan’s chief consort, playing hostess to visitors when he is injured is her prerogative, and how dare Malik Kafur try to usurp that? But such pettiness is immaterial to her greater goal. This plan must work, if she is to save Delhi from her husband’s madness, and she must execute it with her own hands.

Then Padmavati steps out from her palanquin.

Mehrunissa’s mouth runs dry.

“You are truly a miracle of God,” she says, and she is not just talking about her beauty. There is a self-assurance to Padmavati’s walk, a gleam in her eye that Mehru can only dream of. The only other woman she ever saw it in was her own mother.

“The Sultan is only human.”

“And a guilty man as well.”

Mehru would have freed Ratansen from the dungeons even had Padmavati not demanded it so; she wants everything and anything to do with Mewar gone, banished from this palace -- _her_ palace.

But now she does so for this Queen’s sake as well, who strode into the enemy’s stronghold with her head held high to save her husband.

What can Mehru do but honor such bravery?

A pity that Ratansen seems utterly unworthy of such a wife. A few minutes acquaintance’ with the man, and already he has delivered more soliloquies on honor than Mehru has heard in her life.

At least Alauddin knows himself a criminal, and makes no pretense of dressing up his ambition as anything but.

There is a slightly resigned droop to Padmavati’s shoulders, suggesting that she is well-used to her husband’s idiocy. Maybe it is simply Mehru’s own pain clouding her judgment, but she is filled with fellow-feeling.

_Is it the fate of every queen to be chained three times over to an unworthy husband -- by love, by duty, and by guilt?_

Ratansen’s escape is pyrrhic; already she knows the Sultan will go back, once his wounds heal; already she can hear the drums of the battlefield; already she can hear the crash of her own cell door; already she knows Alauddin will win, as he has won everything else.

* * *

Even in the dungeons, she hears of Malik’s arrows in Ratansen’s back, of Padmavati’s ashes on the grounds of Chittor.

She knows not whether she ought to weep, that such a woman’s life should be so choked by the men in it and that her death be a consequence of their failure and greed, or rejoice that Padmavati had her own victory. Their time together had been brief, but she had heard of how fiercely Padmavati proclaimed herself a Rajput, despite being from Singhal, far across the sea.

 _Jauhar_ is the most glorious end a Rajput woman can aspire to, and it would have been Padmavati’s ultimate triumph.

Mehrunissa considers briefly whether such a prospect might not be better: to burn out early and to burn bright, like a meteor crashing into the sun, than to wither away for years and decades like a vine deprived of light and water.

She can never know.

“Perhaps your greatest tragedy, Empress, is that you have betrayed yourself for nothing,” Malik Kafur croons, as he escorts her to her cell.

“Even in tragedy there may yet be victory,” is all Mehrunissa says, and Malik falls silent.

Ma is dead, Abba and Itaat murdered, the Empire sullied. Alauddin may as well be dead, and Padmavati is nothing more than smoke on the wind.

And yet, she has this: Padmavati’s gratitude, Padmavati’s face shining in moonlight, unveiled and smoke-free, Padmavati’s fingers brushing against her own as they lift the bar of the cell door together.

“What did she look like?” the Sultan dares to ask her once, his voice not much more than a murmur.

Padmavati had her victory, on the steps of Chittor, striding towards the flames, and in the end, this is Mehru’s victory:

_You will realize all of your dreams, while you take away all of mine. But what you wanted the most, you will never have. I saw her, touched her, knew her. You couldn’t. You never did, and now never will, but I had her, however briefly._

_You think you can take her from me?_

Mehrunissa lifts her eyes to him, weary and bitter and knowing.


End file.
